


when the rest is wrong you're the one thing right

by firefall



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Assisted Bathing, Canon Compliant, Delirium, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Sickfic, Soft Gentle Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 07:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9169483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefall/pseuds/firefall
Summary: “You okay, buddy?” Tyler greets, not even bothering with hello.  “What’s wrong?”“Tyler?” Josh says and his voice is high-pitched and quiet and completely wrecked.  “I’m so—confused.”Josh is too sick to take care of himself, so Tyler does it for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I literally just wrote this because I was sick on Christmas break for the second year in a row and was mad about it. So rather than deal with it alone, I decided to give Josh my problems. As you do.
> 
> Warnings for: nothing, really. There's a very brief mention of vomiting.
> 
> Title comes from "Dance Until Tomorrow" by the Jonas Brothers because that is the person that I am.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anyone portrayed in this fic and am making no judgments about their characters or personal lives. Tyler and Josh belong to themselves and probably also each other.

Josh is a very sweaty dude.  It’s just fact.  It doesn’t matter if he plays drums for three minutes or three hours, his shirt – if he’s even bothered to wear one – is soaked through by the time he’s put his sticks away.  So it makes sense that it takes Tyler awhile to realize that something is wrong.

When they come together after the last song, bodies pumping with adrenaline and the screams of the crowd echoing in their ears, Josh is dripping from head to toe.  Tyler wrinkles his nose as he slings his arm around Josh’s shoulders, whispering playfully, “Dude, you’re _nasty_!”  

Josh just offers him a tiny smile that Tyler returns, pulling Josh in close anyway.  If there’s one thing Tyler has learned in his twenty-eight years of life it’s that sometimes friendship comes with a little sweat.  Only wimps shy away when things get gross and Tyler – small hands and soft facial region aside – is the farthest thing from a wimp, so he cements himself to Josh’s side as usual and holds on tight as they take their bows.

It takes ages for the roar of the crowd to die down and Tyler to stop feeling like he’s on the edge of tears, but finally everything quiets and they head offstage, shoulder to sweaty shoulder.  They’ve just barely crossed the threshold into their dressing room when Josh turns to Tyler and croaks out, his voice practically gone, “I think I—I’m s- _sick_.”

Then he crumbles to the ground in a heap.

Heart pounding in his chest, Tyler lets out an undignified yelp and falls to his knees next to his best friend.  He calls for Mark or Snyder or _anyone_ , grabbing desperately at Josh’s arms in an attempt to wake him up.  The second he touches Josh’s skin, Tyler pulls back with a hiss.  All of sudden the sticky clothes and the dripping wet hair make sense.  He’s on _fire_. 

It doesn’t take more than a minute for the road crew to kick into action, Michael scooping Josh up bridal-style and Mark calling for an ambulance.  When it’s all said and done and Josh is sitting on the end of an examining table in the emergency room, the situation isn’t anywhere near as serious as they feared: Josh has bronchitis and passed out because his fever got too high.  The doctor gives him an antibiotic and a fever-reducer, sending him on his way with instructions to take it easy and sleep it off.  Josh does both of those things immediately, curling up next to Tyler in the back of the van and conking out with his mouth hanging open.  Tyler can feel the heat of him even through both layers of their clothes.  It makes his brow furrow with worry.

Despite their protests, Josh insists on sleeping in his own hotel room, not wanting to get any of them sick.  Tyler doesn’t like it – and he can tell their friends don’t either – but no matter how small Josh looks right now, he’s an adult and that means they can’t technically force him to do anything. As much as Tyler would like to.

Tyler ends up sharing a room with Snyder and lies awake in the dark for hours, his mind running through the day, looking for signs he must have missed.  Josh’s voice had been a bit scratchy, sure, but that’s to be expected when you go non-stop for months and don’t sleep enough.  He’d seemed _fine_.  Before Tyler’s brain can start in on the berating stage of the insomnia process, his phone buzzes where it’s resting on his pillow.  It’s Josh.

“You okay, buddy?” he greets, not even bothering with _hello_.  He keeps his voice down so as not to disturb Snyder across the room.  “What’s wrong?”

“Tyler?” Josh says and his voice is high-pitched and quiet and completely wrecked.  “I’m so— _confused_.”

Fear gripping at his stomach like icy-cold fingers, Tyler sits up in bed, wide awake.  “Do you want me to come over there?” he whispers.  “Do you need something?”

“I don’t know?” Josh answers and Tyler can hear the bewilderment in his voice.  “I’m so hot, Ty…I think I’m too much?  Too hot—I think.” 

That does it.  Tyler slides off the bed and shoves his feet into his shoes.  “I’m coming,” he tells his friend decisively.  “Don’t move, okay?  Can you do that?”

“I th-think so.”

Luckily, Snyder had thought to keep the extra copy of Josh’s key card, so Tyler is able to bust right through the door.  It ends up being a good thing, because Josh is lying down in the middle of the floor mumbling to himself, his sweaty hair splayed out across the carpet.  He only has one sock on.

As soon as he sees Tyler, he sits up in distress and says, “I can’t run a country!”

Taken aback, Tyler freezes in place.  “What?”

Josh coughs a few times before he can answer, wincing and rubbing at his chest.  “They told me I’m the princess, but I can’t run a country!” he cries, his eyes wide and panicked.  “That’s too much responsibility!”

“Josh,” Tyler says, approaching him slowly so as not to scare him.  “That was just a dream, man.  Sometimes fevers make it hard to tell.”

“Yeah,” Josh agrees seriously, nodding.  “I have a fever.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Tyler’s lips in spite of it all.  “That you do, buddy,” he murmurs, crouching down in front of his friend and putting a hand to his forehead.  When he feels the heat radiating from Josh’s skin, Tyler’s smile drops.  He’s even hotter than he was when he passed out after the show earlier.  It makes Tyler’s gut twist with concern.  “You took your medicine, right?  The one the doctor gave you?”

“Yeah,” Josh says shakily, his eyes unfocused.  “She gave me two…I think?  I took two.”

“Good, yeah, you were supposed to take two,” Tyler soothes distractedly, letting his hands travel down to Josh’s neck and chest, finding that every inch of him is burning hot to the touch.  _Too_ hot.  Like, dangerously hot.  His breath catches when he tells his friend, “We need to get your fever down or you’ll have to go back to the hospital.  Think you can walk with me to the bathroom?”

Instead of answering, Josh uses the edge of the bed to pull himself to his feet.  He’s a bit wobbly, but once Tyler squeezes in beneath Josh’s armpit, they manage to get there in one piece.  Josh is a little more alert at this point, his eyes focused but fever-bright as he sits on the closed toilet seat and watches Tyler fill the bathtub with a couple inches of lukewarm water.  Once he’s satisfied with his work, Tyler turns to Josh and offers a hand to pull him to his feet.  “You gotta get in there,” he says, only the tiniest bit awkward.  “Your fever’s too high.”

Josh doesn’t argue, too far gone to care as he strips out of his clothes and kicks them across the bathroom floor.  He has to clutch Tyler’s hand to get into the tub without falling and as soon as his feet touch the water, a half-gone shout is torn from his throat, making Tyler’s chest clench with sympathy.  “Cold!” Josh cries, sounding much younger than he is.  “ _Hurts_.”

“I know, but we’ve gotta do it,” Tyler apologizes, gently pushing on Josh’s burning shoulders until he’s sitting in the bottom of the bathtub, whimpering and shivering violently as the water laps at his legs.  The scene before him is so unlike the Josh that Tyler knows – the Josh that wins arm-wrestling matches and taps a rhythm on every vaguely flat surface – that it’s starting to freak Tyler out.  This Josh is small and helpless and in pain and Tyler _hates_ it.  He really, really hates it.

Tyler finds a washcloth in the stack of white hotel towels and drops it into the tub, but it soon becomes obvious that Josh isn’t going to be able to do it himself.  He barely manages to drip some water over his knee before he makes a high-pitched sound of distress and tosses the cloth away, letting it smack against the shower wall.  “It’s too c- _cold_ ,” Josh says again, shaking all over and looking up at Tyler with sad eyes.

It’s going on three in the morning and Tyler is exhausted and his best friend is in bad shape, so it isn’t actually that much of a surprise when Tyler’s throat starts closing up.  Oh gosh, he’s going to cry.  “Here, I got you,” he chokes out, trying to get ahold of himself.  Tyler’s supposed to be the strong one right now, so he grabs the washcloth, eyes going wide when he feels the heat leftover from the touch of Josh’s fingers.  “I’ll do it.”

Swallowing hard against the lump in his throat, Tyler gets to work, gently running the cloth over Josh’s back and letting the cold water run down his skin.  He does it again and again, switching between Josh’s back and chest and arms and murmuring apologies as broken sounds fall from between Josh’s lips.  At each touch of the water – now warm from Josh’s fever-hot skin – Josh flinches, every muscle in his body seizing up.  He starts crying at some point, but Tyler doesn’t comment on it, just stops with the water long enough to ruffle Josh’s sweaty hair in a show of solidarity.  This sucks.

They keep at it for what feels like hours, silent except for the sloshing of the water and Josh’s sniffling.  The water doesn’t stay cool for long, so Tyler has to change it out a couple times, sympathetically patting Josh’s back as the tub fills again, low temperature shocking his system.  Tyler can tell when Josh’s fever finally, _finally_ starts to drop, because the flinching gets lesser and the glazed over look leaves his eyes.  It’s when Tyler presses a hand to the back of Josh’s neck and finds the heat of it almost normal that Josh speaks up again.  “Sorry about this,” he mumbles, his face pink but not with fever.  “I’m so pathetic.”

“No, you’re not,” Tyler says firmly and fiercely, dragging the cold cloth over Josh’s chest just one more time.  Content that his best friend is no longer in any danger, he drops it into the bathtub once and for all.  The resulting splash sounds like a resolution.  “It’s okay to be sick and need help.”  Then he grins.  “Remember that time I puked on you in the back of the van?”

That manages to make even Josh smile.  “I’m not likely to forget that for as long as I live.”

“Me neither,” Tyler admits, pulling the plug on the drain and watching the swirling of the water as it disappears into the pipes.  “I’ll also never forget that you cleaned it all up for me and told the guys to shut up whenever they complained about how bad the van smelled.  You’re way nicer than me, dude.”

“That’s a lie and you know it,” Josh disagrees.  He looks like he wants to say more, but before he can get a word out, he yawns so big his eyes start watering.

Feeling relieved and so incredibly fond, Tyler shakes his head with a tiny smile.  “You gotta get back to sleep,” he says softly, but they both know it’s an order.  “And we don’t have a show tomorrow, so I don’t want to see you again until dinner.  You gotta shake this.”

“Yes, sir.”  Josh mock-salutes, making Tyler roll his eyes.  “Whatever you say, sir.”

Still weak and shaky, Josh needs help getting out of the bathtub, but once he pulls on the clean underwear Tyler scrounges up from his suitcase, he’s good to go.  He faceplants onto the giant hotel bed and doesn’t move again, which Tyler takes as his signal to leave.  Before he can get more than a few steps toward the door, however, Josh calls after him, his voice muffled from the pillows, “Stay.”  He rolls sluggishly onto his back to look at Tyler, dark eyes pleading.  “Please?”

If there’s one thing Tyler has learned in his twenty-eight years of life it’s that sometimes friendship comes with a little sweat.  A little sweat and a little sacrifice and a little being there at all hours of the night.  So he smiles privately to himself and says “of _course_ I’ll stay, Josh” and he does.

**Author's Note:**

> First pilots fic so I hope I did okay :)


End file.
